The Cost of Matches
by LucyCrewe11
Summary: The story of "The Little Match Girl" Once Upon a Time/Storybrooke style. Rating may change; still subject to go up to a T at some point. Note: This Fanfiction Is On Hiatus For The Time Being; Sorry...
1. Chapter 1

**AN: My first attempt at a Once Upon a Time fanfic. Probably _not_ my best work ever or anything, but I don't think it's half bad so far, over-all. This is pretty much just my idea of what an episode in season one might have been like if they'd decided to do the story of H.C. Andersen's The Little Match Girl. The reason she's eighteen instead of a little kid is because I thought it might be interesting to do to her character what a lot of recent fairytale stories (including the OUAT show) have done with Little Red Ridding Hood's character, making her a grown up or teen instead of a little girl, and see what happens. This is probably not going to be a very long fanfic, I'm thinking of doing maybe about five chapters or so, give or take, but we'll just see how it goes. **

**Oh and, I think it's obvious, but just in case it's not, Adele is my OC Emmeline's (the little match girl's) Storybrooke counterpart. **

Emmeline ran her fingers along the leather spine of the book her grandmother had just given her. She was kneeling, her legs tucked under her, on the soft crimson-and-green rug in front of fireplace, in which roared a cozy flame and several soft, brightly glowing, yellow-orange embers. Finishing, slowly sliding her fingertips away from the smooth, nice-smelling surface she held in her hands, she lifted her eyes up to her grandmother's face.

"_Thank_ you," she breathed, cheeks flushed with excitement.

The grandmother shook her head modestly, half-smiling as she reached out and lightly nudged Emmeline's chin with the side of her thumb knuckle. "You _ought _to have nice things, Emme." Her eyes flashed from merry to serious, suddenly dark, as if thinking of something that displeased her but she could do very little about. "You're no less special than any other young lady in the kingdom."

Emmeline shrugged.

"You _are_," she insisted. "And there's something else." The grandmother turned her torso, groaning faintly at the effort it took, and lifted something concealed behind herself.

It was a golden chain with a large milk-white and rich blue pearl-and-sapphire pendant cut so that it was shaped in such a fashion that it closely, and purposefully, resembled a shooting (or perhaps _falling_) star dangling from the chunky gold links.

"It's...beautiful..." Emmeline recoiled, as if from embarrassment, or some other form of overt discomfort. She wanted the necklace, the fine present, but she had been talked down to enough to know it was sometimes not worth it to get everything you wanted; not when it meant you got scolded for it within an inch of your life at home.

Keeping secrets was worse. It was worse, because it was delightful; it was delightful to have something, however small, that was yours and yours alone, yet it hurt all the more so when it was discovered and ripped away.

Emmeline had yet to have anything in her life that was not, sooner or later, taken forcibly from her in one way or another.

The grandmother lifted the golden chain over Emmeline's head. "Here, dear. Wear it in good health." As if sensing Emmeline's fears, she added, in a low whisper, "Wear it under your dress."

Emmeline tucked the star pendant under the front of her brown dress and smoothed the top of her tan-colored, much-patched, smock. "I'll wear it always." And, in spite of the odds being against this, quite against her keeping anything of value secret, she meant what she said.

"You're a good lass, Em." She reached out and patted her granddaughter's cheek affectionately. "If only you had been born to a better life."

* * *

Emma Swan turned off the ignition in the official sheriff's patrol car and, leaning over the seat, pressed on the little black button until the window on the passenger's side went down with a faint whirring sound.

She stopped, was dead silent, and listened. Also, she watched, carefully.

It was early evening, not yet dark but close enough. Close enough to detect, easily enough, any sharp contrast to the steadily dimming daylight. And as she'd driven down the road, Emma had thought she saw, out of the corner of one eye, a flash. It was like a beam of yellow light, coming out of a brick-lined alleyway, not even half a block from the apartment she shared with Mary Margaret.

The light went out. Then came back on. Then swayed, like someone was turning it around and around in a deliberate but probably absent-minded way. That was when it landed, shining directly on the side of the patrol car before turning off again. There was the sound of uncertain scrambling, which Emma could hear because she'd gotten out of the car by then and was striding determinedly towards the alleyway.

The person who'd been playing with the light was not very quick, Emma could have caught up to her in two minutes tops with a sprained ankle. Nothing wrong with her feet, she stood, planted firmly in front of the culprit, who turned out to be a short girl, just under five feet tall, with disheveled, very frizzy, light brown hair that would have come down to her waist if it wasn't all sticking out like a witch's wig, holding a flashlight with her trembling left hand.

The girl's dark eyes widened and she took a few steps back. "Please don't make me go back, Sheriff. Please." She'd seen Emma's badge, but since it was a small town she already knew who she was without it anyway.

She maybe wasn't the most observant kind of person, but _everybody_ knew about Emma Swan. The election posters, when she'd been sworn in as sheriff had been hard to miss, as had the gossip that flew over the girl's head so often, as if she wasn't even standing there.

"Wait." Emma held up her hand and blinked, confused. "Make you go back where? What are you doing with that flashlight?"

"I sell them." The girl reached behind a dumpster to her left and pulled out a backpack she'd stashed there a few minutes ago. "Look." She unzipped the largest compartment. Inside were a number of small and medium-sized flashlights.

It was full to the brim. "Don't take this the wrong way, but it really doesn't look like you've sold that many."

"That's just it," she mumbled at the ground. "I didn't sell any. Not today, anyway. Just one, last week. That's why I can't go home." Her eyes filled with tears and she dropped the backpack on the floor by her boot. That was when Emma realized there was a big hole on the side of her boot, near the heel. Her jacket was missing its buttons, too. "I'm... I'm scared."

"How old are you?"

The girl paused, blushing, like the question embarrassed her for some reason. "Eighteen."

Emma was pretty surprised; she'd thought she was addressing a girl barely four or five years older than her son Henry at best, not a girl the same age she was when she'd _had_ Henry.

"Look," said Emma flatly, rolling her eyes. "You're an adult. No one can make you go anywhere."

She shook her head. "Course they can. I got no place else to go."

"Come with me," Emma decided.

She looked even more frightened. "Am I under arrest?"

"Of course not!"

She thought for a moment. "Oh. Okay, then."

"You have a name?" Emma asked.

"Adele," she managed softly. "Adele Matchworth."

"Come on, Adele." Emma walked out of the alleyway, indicating that she should follow.

Adele came, backpack full of flashlights flung haphazardly over one shoulder, getting into the passenger's side of the patrol car. She'd aimed for the back first, though, Emma had noticed, before she realized the sheriff was holding the passenger door open for her. She wondered if the girl had ever been allowed to sit up front in a car in her life, given the semi-shocked look on her face as she climbed in and timidly fingered the dashboard.

They'd gone down two roads before Adele thought to ask where they were going. When Emma hesitated slightly, paying attention to a stop sign they were coming up on, before saying, "My office," (it sounded a lot nicer than _jail_, especially since she wasn't going to put her in a cell or anything), she took it for anger and blurted that she was sorry.

"For _what_?" Emma's forehead crinkled.

Adele shrugged. When it came down to it, she wasn't actually sure; it just felt right, _normal_ even, to apologize.

* * *

"I'm _sorry_," whimpered Emmeline, pulling the frayed shawl tighter around her shoulders, fighting back a fresh round of shivers, from out-right fear as much as the coldness that seemed no less in the cottage than outside on the streets of the nearest town she'd spent the day wandering, pockets full of matches for sale.

"Sorry?" snapped her mother. "Sorry isn't going to give us money to buy food with."

Emmeline was the thinnest body in the family, she got less to eat than any of them. It occurred to her, suddenly and rebelliously, that she could-_should_, really-say something back about this. If _she_ wasn't complaining, why ought they? Then again, they were older, and her parents, and a minute later, when her mother started in (as she surely would) on how much of a burden putting food in her mouth was, how much it cost, how she ate the most, she'd knew she would believe them. Somehow, she always did; even when she knew they were wrong, or just flat-out lying. She was slow, not in mind itself so much as wits and biting words. Emmeline felt stupid when she argued with anyone; it was her one sense of stinging pride her poor circumstances allowed her. So she simply didn't. It was easier to give in, to let others win debates, seeing as it was so important to them, and it left her alone in peace with her misery.

But sometimes she looked at her father, who was the cruelest to her, simply because he blamed her, as her mother did, for not selling enough matches, but also for incurring her mother's wrath, and wondered. He liked peace and quiet, too. He hated hearing his wife's nagging. And it seemed that, lately, ever since the girl was no longer a child yet stayed on with them, every other complaint out of her mouth began, or else ended, with the name of their daughter.

Was it possible, Emmeline wondered sometimes when her hunger pains or the bruises (those visible and those not) were so bad she could not for the life of her fall asleep, that once upon a time, long, long ago, her father was just like her? Submissive, wanting quiet, giving in to every whim of others, thinking it would make things better?

_No_, she would tell herself, getting up, bare feet on the chilly floor though it was no colder than the bed with its hole-filled, louse-infested blankets already was, making her way to the lopsided window and lifting the creaky latch, _I'm nothing like him._

She would look out at the stars, touch the bulge at the front of her dress, remember her grandmother, and _know_. The Grandmother had had no patience for her father, but she had admired _her_; wanted to protect her.

Only grandmother was gone now... Was..._dead_... The only person left now to protect Emmeline, to stand up for Emmeline, was Emmeline herself. There was absolutely nobody else to turn to.

But where did one go, when one decided, just maybe, to stand up for one's self? To stop doubting and blindly obeying? That question, which she could not answer, kept Emmeline from actually doing anything about it.

"Tomorrow," her father hissed, intervening before her mother could get angrier and turn on _him_ next; "tomorrow you'll sell every single match your laziness cost this family today. Do you hear?"

Emmeline plucked at a loose thread in the shawl. "Yes. I hear."

"Good."

"But I can't."

"Can't _what_?" His greenish-gray eyes darkened, almost to a pale icy blue.

"Can't sell what people won't buy," she murmured, already regretting having spoken up.

"You didn't offer to enough people," her mother said. "Nor to the _right _ones. The right_ sort_. You did it on _purpose_, too, little twit! You wanted free time to sneak off and look at everything in the marketplace when no one was buying from you."

_I didn't, I didn't!_ "I suppose," squeaked through her trembling lips. It was true, as they claimed, that she was fond of getting done early, when she honestly could (which was actually rare enough), and looking at pretty trinkets and baubles she could never afford. Having no money didn't mean she couldn't identify, and _enjoy_, beauty when she saw it.

Still, she had done her best-her very best-to sell those matches. It wasn't her fault that all she got, for her efforts, were no-thank-yous, shaking heads, and the occasional gruff shove out of the way.

"You'll make up for it tomorrow," her mother stated, firmly, leaving no room for argument or protest, even if Emmeline had been able to force one out.

The match girl swallowed hard. "I suppose."

"You _suppose_?" Her father took a step towards her, one eyebrow arched.

Emmeline took a step back. "Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I will." She blinked, feeling her throat relax as her father's eyebrow slowly sank back into its right shape. (How could so light and straw-like a brow be so frightening? Perhaps she was just a coward. It wouldn't really surprise her to learn that about herself, when all was said and done.) She almost added, "I promise," but then thought better of it. Emmeline, even if she _was_ the coward she feared herself to be, had one virtue that was undeniable; short of the sky falling on her head, there was nothing that could make her break a promise. That was why she couldn't say those last two words. If she said it, and failed, however impossible, however much she was goaded into it, she'd never forgive herself for turning back on a solid, distributable vow.

* * *

Twice Emma had picked up the phone, thinking to call someone about Adele, and twice she'd put it back down.

Adele had been very cooperative. Much as she didn't want to go back home to her parents, she had no problem immediately blurting out a phone number when Emma asked for contact information. But that was, of course, almost instantly, followed by another round of pleading not to make her go back; she was scared, she repeated, her eyes darting, this time a bit unwittingly, to her backpack. The zipper was closed, at that moment, only halfway and the florescent lights in the office ceiling flickered down on the cold, black plastic of the flashlights' handles.

Shaking her head and grunting lightly out of frustration, Emma picked up the phone again. She didn't call Adele's parents, though; she called Mary Margaret. It would have been so much easier if Adele had been as young as she seemed and acted, young enough to be in her friend's class. Then she would have been able to get some information on her.

In theory, Adele was lucky to even_ have_ parents to go home to, but if they had anything to do with her nervous mannerisms and brutally unkempt appearance (as Emma strongly suspected, sensing with her 'super power' that Adele's fear was real and she was being completely honest with her), she was probably better off without them.

If only she had some other place to go.

All the same, Mary Margaret might know _something_. She'd lived in Storybrooke longer than Emma, after all.

She didn't. At least, she didn't know anything that was exactly news to Emma. She was able to tell her over the phone that she'd seen Adele Matchworth plenty of times, that she was poor and always wore the same coat, and every day, mid-afternoon, she went into Granny's, rarely ordered anything to eat (likely because she couldn't afford it), but always got two glasses of water; the first she swallowed in less than two steady gulps, the other she sipped, sitting down at a table, looking out the window, like she wanted an excuse to linger. Emma already figured she was poor; she hadn't seen her at Granny's ordering nothing but water, but it didn't sound unlike something somebody with no money and no desire to go home early might do. And it didn't give her any clues as for what to do with the girl now that she'd picked her up out of the alleyway and brought her in.

"Hey, Adele-" she began, hanging up the phone. Then she stopped. The chair Adele had been sitting in, hands folded in her lap in a clenched, kid-in-trouble kind of way, was empty. The backpack was still under it, but she was gone. "What the hell?" Emma finally spotted her, in one of the cells, curled up on the bunk, wrapped in the blanket, sleeping.

She thought of waking her up, but it felt wrong. It was a different girl than the one Emma had just met who slept there. She was relaxed; eyes closed but with lids flat and not crinkled up, fists uncurled, one arm dangling over the edge of the bunk like a large jungle cat's paw hanging down from a high-up tree branch it dozed comfortably on...

Emma groaned to herself, rolled her eyes, and decided to let the girl sleep for now. The alternative was to wake her, or call her parents; or both. None of which seemed appealing. Adele was sleeping like she hadn't slept in years. Best to just let her rest, for a little while.

**AN: Any good? Thoughts? Review if you please.**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Thank you to all of you who reviewed the first chapter; I'm sorry I never got around to sending replies. I was going to do so tonight, before I posted this, but I was feeling a little unwell and I'm tired now. So I'll try to reply to you reviewers this time around, if I can, assuming you still feel like reviewing, of course, lol. **

"M-m-matches," stammered Emmeline, holding out a charcoal stick and waving it about in air as she stood in the main square of the marketplace, trying to get folks' attention. "Matches for s-s-sale!" She willed her teeth to stop chattering so violently, but they would not obey, the bitter cold giving them a will quite of their own, very separate from even her mind's most direct of orders.

No one paid her mind. People went by, most of them not glancing her way. Those that did, for she was not unpleasant to look at, if one could overlook the fact that she was visibly in poor health and even poorer clothing, gave her a brief pitying stare then quickly moved on and forgot about her. It never occurred, not even to the more decent passersby, to buy matches and help ease her misery; it never so much as entered their heads.

Why _would_ it? After all, they all had half-decent cottages to go home to. And, if they lived near enough to have heard her cries at night, to know and dislike her parents, they thought something ought to be done but that was as far as it went. Yes, something should be done, the poor girl... Now would someone be so good as to blow out the candle before turning in? Wouldn't do to burn, stupidly and in so humiliating a fashion, to a crisp in their beds while they slept; would not do at all!

A kindly child _did_ stop, blink at Emmeline's sooty, pitched face, and hand her a hot bun.

She smiled and swallowed it (it was small, no bigger than a clenched fist, more air than wheat and flour), prepared to thank the child graciously. But then she noticed a scowl on the little chap's crumbling, disbelieving face, and realized. He hadn't meant to _give_ her the bread; he was used to his mother blowing on it for him so it wasn't so hot, fresh from the bakery, but she had left him a moment, to enter a hat shop and talk with a friend she'd spotted and felt the need to greet. So the poor boy-child, noticing that the match girl seemed nice enough, had handed her the bun, never thinking any explanation was needed.

_Oh dear..._ Emmeline blushed at her mistake (even if it wasn't very discernible, since her face was already gone as red as it possibly could from the cold).

The boy had a sister, a little older, who came up next, sputtering out some nonsense. Emmeline liked her immediately, but it was the little brother she felt she had to keep from crying; she'd just eaten his treat, not his sister's.

"There now..." Emmeline knelt down on the frosty ground, placing down her charcoal stick in a light dusting of pure white snow. "Hush, child, hush. It's all right. I'm sorry; I thought you were giving it to me. Don't cry, I'll tell you a story."

The boy looked mildly appeased, the bun probably forgotten in favor of a new friend, a new idea, but the girl's eyes were lit up. She loved stories.

Emmeline rattled off an old tale her grandmother had told her, about a man who stopped children from having to be carried off to fight in the ogre wars but suffered a terrible price; he had the magic to stop the wickedness done to the children, to give them their childhoods back, but in turn he had to take on a power that all but controlled him, evil taking root.

It was a deliciously scary, exciting, magical, and intriguing story. The girl loved it; the boy seemed appropriately amused.

"I didn't know all that," said the girl, mouth hanging agape. "I knew Baelfire's Pa was the Dark One, but I didn't... Had no idea... 'Bout the war and all! And you tell it so _nice_!"

Emmeline was stunned. She thought what she was telling was only a made-up story, an urban myth at best, nothing real. Grandmother had never said Rumpelstiltskin was an actual person. And who was this Baelfire?

"Baelfire," the girl repeated, as though she thought everyone who wasn't a half-wit should know who he was and was rather thrown that the clever lady who'd told such an exciting story honestly _didn't_. "He comes through here sometimes." She frowned. "He's a boy," she added, slowly, as if suddenly speaking to a simpleton. "A big boy, much bigger than me and him." She nudged her brother. "Thirteen or fourteen, I think." Then, "Everyone's scared of him, cause of his Pa, so's they's used to leaving him alone mostly. He's the one from your story. But he's not bad, Baelfire. He's nice. Gave me a peppermint stick once."

Emmeline's dark eyes lightened considerably, almost to a caramel-like shade. _Baelfire_. A real son of the Dark One. Near here.

She regarded her matches; the matches she was utterly unable to sell; the matches she'd just wasted time (depending on how you looked at it) not even trying to sell, on account of trying to comfort the boy and then getting lost in the telling of the story.

Was there some way she could find, and strike a deal with, 'Baelfire's Pa'?

Of course, she didn't trust the little (_extremely_ little, to be exact) she knew of magic, knowing from the story, if nothing else, that all magic came with a price. But she had nothing left to lose. Rumpelstiltskin might be a force to be reckoned with, but, then again, so were her parents. And at least the Dark One had an excuse. Her parents had nothing controlling them save their own closed-off minds and hardened hearts.

* * *

Adele woke with a start. One eye opened, taking in the cell, remembering where she was.

Oddly enough, for a brief moment, she felt happy. Truly. _Happy_, because she wasn't at home; she was in some other place, a place she didn't immediately resister in her mind as jail. It was so quiet. She wished she'd done something so she could stay. Would Sheriff Swan forget she didn't belong in here if she were really, really quiet? When she remembered, as anyone with half a brain evidently must sooner or later, would she let her rest a few extra days instead of booting her out into the streets, or, more likely, back to her parents' house where she still had no wish to return, right away? If she begged hard enough?

"You're up." Emma's eyes lifted from behind a newspaper she'd been reading at her desk, her gaze briefly flickering to Adele.

_Rats_. _She remembered._ "Morning," she managed, with surprising brightness for someone in her situation.

"I got you," she said, reaching behind the desk and lifting up a brown paper bag that read _Granny's_ and a to-go cup of coffee, "some breakfast."

Adele sat up straight on the bunk. Emma wasn't sure how she managed it, seeing as she didn't even seem conscious of it, but the girl in the cell had gone from having slumping posture to ramrod straight, like a ballerina, or a girl siting on an old-fashioned chair with a high wooden back. The tip of Adele's tongue stuck out and licked her top lip quickly, involuntarily. She was totally famished.

Her good posture vanished as she jackknifed herself over the brown bag, riffled through the contents, and practically stuffed her face. She washed several mouthfuls down with the coffee.

"I wasn't sure if you were a coffee-drinker," Emma admitted. "So I took a wild guess."

Swallowing quickly, trying her best not to talk with her mouth full, though it was tempting and, really, on the whole, she only half-succeeded, Adele blurted, "No, you were right. I love coffee. When we have it at the house, I mean. Sometimes we don't; I have a headache on those mornings." On those mornings, when the cold and headaches were so discouraging, and she often had cases of the jitters, Adele hadn't even wanted to go to school when she was younger, let alone door-to-door selling flashlights. But her parents made her.

"Ms. Swan," snapped a tense-sounding voice, echoing slightly. The sound of clacking heels on the floor filled Emma and Adele's ears; Regina appeared, frowning. "Henry's school called; he's been skipping school to spend time here. I don't think I have to tell you it's-" She stopped, noticing Adele. "What is _she_ doing here?"

"Hi," bleated Adele, sheepishly.

"You two know each other?" Emma asked.

Adele cringed and appeared to be trying to make herself look as small as possible by pressing her back against the wall and pulling her legs closer to her body on the bunk.

"Her mother is an acquaintance of mine," Regina said condescendingly, brow furrowed with impatience, as though this was something that should have been common knowledge, for whatever reason. "Why is she in jail?"

Emma grunted. "She's not under _arrest_, I just didn't want her to spend the night on the street."

"Ms. Swan," simpered Regina, glaring, "you should have taken her home to her parents."

"She didn't want to go," said Emma flat-out. Adele was a grown-up, however timid and child-like her demeanor happened to be; no one had the right to make her go back to a place she didn't want to be.

"Adele doesn't know _what _she wants," Regina told her. "Ninety percent of the time she doesn't even know what she's _saying_. She's suffered from a serious mental disorder since she was a very small child."

"And you know this because...?"

"Her parents were having car trouble when they were getting her diagnosed, so I gave them a lift; I was there, at Doctor Hopper's office, on the day they figured out what was wrong with her."

"Well," growled Emma, smelling a rat, "isn't that convenient?"

"She signed a document," added Regina, without missing a beat. "When she was a in a calmer state, Adele officially signed over her rights to make personal and monetary decisions. There's a copy of it back in my office somewhere, I'm sure."

"I'm sure there _is_." Emma's eyes narrowed.

Adele's eyes filled with tears and she stood up, crossing her arms and holding her own elbows. For the first time she had a glimmer of hope. Emma seemed to understand. Maybe she would help her. "Sheriff?"

"Yes?"

"They _made _me sign it." Adele swallowed at a lump in her throat. It was now or never. She had to show someone-someone who could make a _difference_-that she wasn't insane. "And I'm _not _crazy."

**AN: Please review.**


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